The Christchurch Star WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1933. MOTORING DANGERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 931, 29 November 1933, Page 6

The Christchurch Star

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1933. MOTORING DANGERS.

PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd, Gloucester Street end Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND.

P'OR THE CREATION of legal impediments it would be ditlicult to find anything comparable in the statutes of New Zealand to that provision under which, in a claim for damages under the compulsory insurance scheme, the. victim of a hit-and-run motorist has to prove that the vehicle that struck him was fitted with a number-plate of the current year. The vehicle has vanished and it would he almost as reasonable to ask the injured person to prove that the number-plate war, not a counterfeit of the year’s issue as to prove that it was a current number-plate at all. This provision should be struck out of the Act. In fact, a general widening of the compulsory insurance benefits is desirable in the interests of the public. It is a nice question whether negligence on the part of every motorist should be assumed until the contrary is proved, for on that line we are nearing the stage when it would be as reasonable to compel the pedestrian to insure himself against accident and collect damages whether negligence was proved or not, as to single the motorist out to insure negligent persons against their own folly. If there is a weakness in the present system it is the creation of an insurance pool organised to defend every action with resources that are not available to a poor man. Nor would the system of the Admiralty Courts, under which damage is assessed according to the degree of negligence on the part of two or three parties, be workable. Civil juries are by no means equal to the task of following the intricacies of a problem as to the degree of negligence exercised by different parties to an accident, and even the simple questions that judges submit to juries sometimes make confusion worse confounded. Probably it will be necessary to take motoring cases entirely out of the hands of juries, and although when that is done a certain partiality to the popular side will be removed, it is probable that litigants with a fair claim will be in a more advantageous position. DR WILSON’S DISCOVERY. TAR EDWARD WILSON, who " perished with Scott on the return from the South Pole, wrote to his father from Christchurch in 1904: New Zealand has not yet woken up to the fact that it is a ready-made world sanatorium with the most astounding variety of springs at all temperatures and of all chemical combinations, all handy and workable. I had no notion of the wealth of this country from a therapeutic point of -view. Dr Wilson noted what any observant traveller must note, but the pity is that New Zealand itself does not act on the advice of its distinguished visitors. Lord Bledisloe, speaking at Hanmer, asked why New Zealand did not advertise its beauty spots and its health and peace resorts to a greater extent, and he assured his audience that it was his intention to bring the virtues of Hanmer before the Dominion’s Oflice just as he bad done in the case of Rotorua. But New Zealand should do more than this, for its health resorts should be known throughout the world. INQUIRY NEEDED. TT IS ALMOST AMUSING to learn that the Director of Air Services considers that no good would be served by holding an inquiry into the Turiwhate flying accident “ as both pilot and passenger have been killed.” There will, of course, be a Coroner’s inquiry, and it would be competent to call expert evidence regarding flying risks generally, but after all the Coroner is primarily concerned with the cause of death, and it is not only desirable but necessary that every aspect of the fatality should be considered from the point of view of safety in the air, having regard to the most expert evidence available.